


The Captain's got his boots on (he's going back to war)

by innocent_until_proven_geeky



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Children of Earth Compliant, Episode: s03e05 Children of Earth - Day 5, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Series 03: Children of Earth (Torchwood)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:41:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29771499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/innocent_until_proven_geeky/pseuds/innocent_until_proven_geeky
Summary: Gwen looked for every reason she could to keep Jack Harkness on Earth.The Captain's got his boots on and he's heading out the doorLeaving his lady alone thinking "He don't love me no more"He's done with all this bullshit, he's going back to warIf heaven is as heaven does then this is hell for sure
Relationships: Gwen Cooper & Jack Harkness
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11
Collections: Torchwood Fan Fests: Music Fest 2021





	The Captain's got his boots on (he's going back to war)

**Author's Note:**

> An offering for [Torchwood Fan Fests](https://torchwoodfanfests.tumblr.com/) Music Fest 2021. This fic is based on the third verse of the song [The Captain And The Hourglass](https://open.spotify.com/track/3SG2x620GuQbuD97Q9lJDM?si=0f046fbd90164286) by Laura Marling.
> 
> Many thanks to my beta Nik! I appreciate you very much, friend.

Gwen looked for every reason she could to keep Jack Harkness on Earth.

She wouldn’t let Rhys pick out the leather strap to fix Jack’s vortex manipulator; she spent a month scouring every shop in Cardiff and half of the rest of South Wales for one that was so awful Jack wouldn’t want to wear it and would ask her to get a different one. When she found one, though, she couldn’t bring herself to get it. She didn’t just want Jack to stay; she wanted him to stay for _her_.

So Gwen spent the next three months working on fixing the damned vortex manipulator. She had never been the one to tinker with alien technology; that job belonged to Suzie, before Gwen ever joined Torchwood, and then was passed on to Tosh when Suzie died.

Then Tosh had died, and Gwen and Ianto and Jack were left scrambling, but Ianto the archivist and Jack the actual alien did most of the fiddling with Rift gifts.

And now Ianto was gone, and Jack insisted on leaving.

Gwen glowered down at her project every day, wanting to make progress and prove she knew what she was doing, and dreading finishing the task; every night, she called Jack’s mobile. He never answered, and she always talked until voicemail cut her off, but she updated him about the baby growing inside her and about Rhys’s job and even her headway on his manipulator. She finished every message with, “I love you, Jack.”

She hoped he was listening.

Two days after she finished the vortex manipulator, she got a phone call from a number she didn’t recognize. She was out to lunch with Rhys after an appointment with the O&G and let it go straight to voicemail.

She regretted it as soon as she got home and listened to it. It was Jack’s voice, tight and empty, with a date and a time and a set of coordinates that translated roughly to a tall hill at the edge of the city and nothing else.

Well.

At least he was listening.

* * *

Her O&G probably wouldn’t approve of the trek up the hill after three months of sitting on a chair at a table toying with a futuristic piece of alien hardware. It was cold, and dark, and Gwen was sure she was going to fall and probably take Rhys down with her, so she made sure to poke gentle fun at Jack when they finally reached him.

“Couldn’t’ve just chosen a pub, could you?” she teased. She heard the quaver in her own voice, the unshed tears at _seeing Jack again_ and _knowing what was coming_.

“It’s bloody freezing,” Rhys added. “My feet!”

Jack’s expression barely changed. “Well, I missed that, the Welsh complaining.” And then, “You look good.”

Gwen couldn’t find it in her to accept the compliment, even when Rhys insisted on reminding her that she was gorgeous. There was a feeling, a tension--she knew where this was going, and if bantering wasn’t going to fix it, compliments about how she looked while pregnant certainly wouldn’t either.

Gwen let go of Rhys’s hand and approached Jack. “You okay?” she asked, more quietly.

“Yeah.” Jack sounded sincere, relieved, like he was healing. Gwen wasn’t sure he really was.

She reached up to adjust his collar. “Did it work?”

Jack nodded, and his voice went rough when he said, “Travelled all sorts of places.” He took a deep breath. “This planet is too small; the whole world is like a graveyard.”

And he was right. It was. Gwen had seen too much, so much--death and anguish and the evil of the powers that be. The losses of Tosh and Owen and Ianto and even Suzie rested heavily on her, more than she had ever imagined her own parents’ deaths would. The world was too small and too angry to contain her grief, and Jack’d had centuries of it.

But shouldering the burden of grief was why Gwen had Rhys, why she needed Jack, and she knew, or at least hoped, that he needed her too.

“Come back with us,” Gwen said, knowing the answer before it came.

“Haven’t travelled far enough yet. Got a lot of dirt to shake off my shoes.” But Jack’s eyes were rimmed red.

He wanted to go, and he wanted to stay. He _had_ to want to stay. Gwen needed him to stay.

Jack looked up abruptly, into the clear night sky. Gwen followed his gaze.

“Right now, there’s a cold fusion cruiser surfing the ion reefs just at the edge of the solar system, just waiting to open its transport dock. I just need to send a signal.”

So that was that, then. Gwen held up a finger and tried to give Jack a smile. The vortex manipulator was in her pocket; she pulled it out and unfolded the leather strap.

“They found it in the wreckage,” she said, forcing a lightness she didn’t feel into her voice. “Indestructible, just like its owner.” Of course, he knew all this from her voicemails. “I put on a new strap for you.”

“Cost me fifty quid, that!” Rhys called from behind.

“Bill me,” Jack replied, and it was almost right, except it wasn’t because Jack was _leaving_ and--

“Are you ever coming back, Jack?” Gwen asked.

“What for?”

Gwen knew the moment her heart broke. Suzie, Tosh and Owen, Ianto, even some of the strangers she had helped for a day, they had all been hammers and chisels, taking out pieces and making dents, but Jack.

Jack broke it clean in half.

“Me,” Gwen said anyway, as if she could convince him, as if losing friend after friend and team after team and loved one after loved one could be healed over with just her mere presence. But if it could, he would have come to see her earlier. And he hadn’t.

Maybe Jack loved her. But not enough.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she reminded him.

“I think it was.”

“No.” But Gwen said it too fast, she knew she did.

“Stephen. And Ianto. And Owen and Tosh and _Suzie_. All of them, because of me.”

“But you saved us, didn’t you?”

Jack’s entire body trembled with tension and grief and regret. “I began to like it, and look at what I became. Still--I have lived _so many lives_. It’s time to find another one.”

Jack stepped back, away from Gwen, and pressed a button on his vortex manipulator. At least he had the decency to look like he would miss her and Rhys.

Gwen couldn’t stop the tears from slipping down her cheeks, now that he had pressed the button, even as she kept going, kept trying to keep him _here with her_. “They died, and I am _sorry_ , Jack, but you cannot just run away. You cannot run away.” She barely got the words out past the knot in her throat.

“Oh, yes I can,” Jack replied, and his voice was stiller than it had been. “Just watch me.” He shimmered with light--the transport of the cruiser he had mentioned, probably--and disappeared, up into the sky and beyond, until he looked like a star and then nothing at all.

* * *

Gwen watched the sky every night until Anwen was born. She knew just enough about constellations to find the spot where he had fled into the night and would stare at that spot and hope that something, some _light_ , would appear there. Some sort of sign.

After the baby was born she hardly thought about it. She nursed and changed nappies and slept in winks, and she and Rhys moved to a cottage on the coast, far from anyone who could matter to Gwen, far from anyone who might abandon her, too.

Sometimes, she dreamed about them, Ianto and the rest, and she would wake up crying or sometimes shouting if it happened to be a nightmare. But her dreams about Jack were different--more vivid and more memorable and filled with an immortal man who wished desperately to be mortal.

She didn’t want dreams. She wanted letters, or phone calls, or _Jack_.

But Jack had gone back to his life before Earth, before Cardiff and before Torchwood.

He didn’t want her.

**Author's Note:**

> If the middle of this fic sounds familiar, that would be because it was borrowed heavily from the scene at the end of Day 5 when Jack leaves.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Consider checking out my writing blog, [Ver Writes Things](https://ver-writes-things.tumblr.com). I take prompts and submissions and have a few tumblr exclusives.


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